OBAMA COMMENTS ON IRAQ REVELATIONS

Baghdad August 22, 2009 (AP). The suicide bombers who blew up explosives-laden trucks outside government buildings in Baghdad may have been aided by members of Iraq's security forces, the foreign minister said Saturday, even as the government insisted Iraqi forces could still protect the nation.” From an Associated Press dispatch today [note: the Associated Press is not connected in any way with the Apocryphal Press.]

President Barack Obama issued this statement today on the events in Baghdad.

“My fellow citizens, I profoundly regret and seriously disapprove the situation in Iraq’s capitol that resulted in the deaths of innocent people as well as destruction and fear. I am most concerned that Iraq security forces may have been involved. This results from a lack of bipartisanship and a cooperative approach to solving difficult problems.

I now call upon the government of Iraq to seek support from the terrorists for its security forces so that security may become a truly bipartisan and cooperative operation. Iraq should refuse to deploy its security forces without such support.

Furthermore, I suggest that security forces and terrorists alike be required to wear jackets in colors that denote which side they’re on and an identifying name or slogan, such as our police and F.B.I. people wear during a raid to avoid confusing them with their targets. For example, using the colors of the Iraqi flag, the security forces might wear black jackets that say “official security” while the terrorists might wear red ones that say “terrorist.” This would make it much easier for security forces to spot traitors who work with the terrorists. Failing that, I propose a system of numbered uniforms and scorecards.

I predict that there will be a satisfactory bipartisan security program in place in Iraq by year’s end.”

READER’S DIGEST, VENERABLE VETERAN OF AMERICA’S DENTAL OFFICES, TO GO BANKRUPT

August 18, 2009 (AP). The Reader’s Digest Association announced on Monday that it would file for prearranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for its United States businesses within 30 days. Mary Berner, chief executive officer for the last two years, will continue to run the company. From a news story today in the New York Times.

The company released this statement on behalf of its CEO.

“It seems like only a couple of years ago that on a bright sunny morning, cloudless and balmy, I drove northward on the east bank of the Hudson River to Pleasantville and my new job leading Readers Digest. I turned on the radio, hummed along with the latest pop tunes by Doris Day, Nat King Cole, and Perry Como, and tapped my long, crimson nails on the plastic steering wheel of my two-tone India Ivory and Larkspur Blue Bel Air. My mood matched the day as my high heeled pumps held the Chevy to a safe and sane 45 miles per hour.

Imagine my chagrin when I entered my new office and, in spite of the lovely view of the “Life in These United States” tulip garden and the river, I found the walls painted a perfectly awful shade of chartreuse. But my mother always taught me to see the positive side and not look to others to solve my problems, so I took my new corporate credit card and went to the hardware store in town where I picked up a ladder, some brushes and four or five cans of Larkspur Blue enamel.

Imagine my chagrin as I discovered upon my return that my new assistant was my ex-husband’s mistress, the floozy that broke up my once perfect marriage and forced me back to the work force. Still following my mother’s teachings, I gave her the choice of quitting or being run through with a sharpened letter opener.

Imagine my chagrin when she huffed out without quitting and, as I soon learned, flounced right over to HR where she accused me of horrible things. But I overcame. Soon, I had repainted the walls, settled the floozy’s law suit, and began the work of making Reader’s Digest once again America’s greatest source of meaningless fluff.

Imagine my chagrin when I found out the company was broke and would have to go bankrupt. Mama! I need help!"

APOCRYPHAL PRESS ARTS CRITICISM

SHEKI MBEKI REVIEWS

SACHA BARON COHEN'S BRUNO

Friday, August 07, 2009. Last night I visited a local cinemaplex to investigate a new exercise in Sacha Baron Cohenism, a cinematic phenomenon that has swept our film houses. His new joint (it is far too serious and complex to call it a “movie”) Bruno, is a work of art that explores the soft underbelly, the conventionalism, and the downright foolishness of those who are not Sacha Baron Cohen. Hiding in the interstices of what seems at first to be the dumbest movie ever made is a profound philosophical core that, like the emperor’s new clothes, is visible only to the wise and deep among us who, it is safe to say, are very few in number.

Baron Cohen –so young, so titled–creates an apparently hideous character as the central figure in what seems to be an awful entertainment as a divining rod to find insight. Ironic it is that Bruno, an exquisitely shallow man, is the litmus test for profundity, for the film reveals things that otherwise would remain hidden, such as various body parts of Baron Cohen’s that, like the meaning of this cinematic triumph, often remain unseen.

The apotheosis of this anatomical revelation comes when a fully erect penis, ostensibly Baron Cohen’s, points out at the audience, as if to say, “beware,” in the manner of Babe Ruth pointing his bat at the center field bleachers in the 1932 World Series. Unlike Ruth, whose quotidian understanding left him no choice but to hit a home run to the very place to which he had pointed, Baron Cohen teasingly leaves the meaning of this display of turgid concupiscence to the imaginations of thoughtful audience members, of which group none were present at the showing I attended.

Perhaps he wanted his viewers to “think outside the box,” which, clearly, was where the rigid digit was at the moment we saw it.

To those who take offense at the surface of the humor, which was extremely crude, Baron Cohen seems to say, “go deeper, go deeper.” Bruno is a treasure of metaphor and meta-meaning. If you come out of the theater shaking your head and saying, “this is the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” you will, of course, be right. But then stop a moment and ask yourself “what is all this stupidity trying to tell me?”